


Splinters

by ink_kettle



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood Magic, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Insanity, Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Withdrawal, M/M, Mage Abuse and Oppression, Mage/Templar Relationships, Multi, Read at Your Own Risk, Red Lyrium, Self-Harm, The Chantry, The Circle, Unhealthy Relationships, Warnings attached to the top of each chapter as they apply
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-04-20 06:22:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14254869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ink_kettle/pseuds/ink_kettle
Summary: A collection of Dragon Age oneshots, short stories and ideas. Now with an index.-1. index.2. aftermath - Post DA2. Both Meredith and Orsino survive the Last Straw, but the Gallows are harder to leave behind than expected.3. humanity - Hawke makes a mistake and can't bring herself to correct it. hawkedith.4. bloody lilies - Quentin sends lilies to his victims, but letters to Orsino.5. card castles in the sky - Hawke, abandoned in the Fade, shapes a world that she finds familiar - and promptly becomes lost within it.6. guilt - Meredith feeling guilty about enjoying herself, plus Hawke who never learnt shame. hawkedith.7. orsino in skyhold - part one of an au where orsino is alive in dai, and saves the inquisitor's life.





	1. Index

1\. index.  
2\. aftermath - Post DA2. Both Meredith and Orsino survive the Last Straw, but the Gallows are harder to leave behind than expected.  
3\. humanity - Hawke makes a mistake and can't bring herself to correct it. hawkedith.  
4\. bloody lilies - Quentin sends lilies to his victims, but letters to Orsino.  
5\. card castles in the sky - Hawke, abandoned in the Fade, shapes a world that she finds familiar - and promptly becomes lost within it.  
6\. guilt - Meredith feeling guilty about enjoying herself, plus Hawke who never learnt shame. hawkedith.   
7\. orsino in skyhold - part one of an au where orsino is alive in dai, and saves the inquisitor's life.


	2. aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post DA2. Both Meredith and Orsino survive the Last Straw, but the Gallows are harder to leave behind than expected. Warnings for Meredith being Meredith and the Gallows having been terrible.  
> Two 500 word prompts.

_trembling hands_

Every entry in the journal begins with her name and the date, just as the healer ordered. Lest she forget, Meredith thinks bitterly. In the early days of howling red fury, Meredith had little choice but to agree to such trite measures if she wanted the restraints loosened. Mad beasts do not deserve to go unmuzzled, but Meredith has never been anything but rational.

Hawke appears to feel, however, that treating Meredith as if she is insane makes her sufferable.

Her hand clenches like a crab-claw around the quill. The entry is a mess; each letter is wobbly and malformed, blots of ink obscuring whole words, and slashing the page are scratchy, shivery lines when Meredith’s hand jitters out of her control. Like most things these days, words are a negotiation; Meredith must keep safe strength like precious silver, spending it sparely, angry with each wasted penny.

Her fingers are numb with cold, sunken deep into her bones like great tunnels of ice, the empty waterways of power carved into mortal flesh. If Meredith concentrates, she can still feel the lyrical strains of that blood-soaked choir purring resentfully within her, curled close like poison in her red blood. Hawke has not left her to thirst; there are weekly deliveries of lyrium philtres, but more often than not the addictive lyrium, half drunk, is hoarded away into a cabinet that only Hawke has the other key to. The blood of the Maker is not for the undeserving or weakwilled – and Meredith has been both, falling to the whispers of red lyrium, failing to control herself and her men, failing even to die in her duty.

Proper penitence is difficult to achieve when she fails to remember that she is no longer even Knight-Commander most days. She is not irrational – but there are… gaps, hollows ripped by the Maker’s merciless will inside of her that were not there before. Cullen wears the armour now that they took from her twitching, screaming body. She has scars instead, raw to the festering bone, scars stitched shut while Meredith was strapped down with the gag she shudders to remember shoved between her teeth and her tongue, to keep her screams of fury inarticulate.

She grits her teeth, to remind herself that she can. How far the mighty have fallen. How far she has fallen, living at the servitude of a mage’s opinion of her ability to carry out the duties which have carved and consumed her since childhood. They will not tell her what happened at the Gallows, how much of the infestation she cut free, how many stains remain. She is a prisoner until she can make herself properly palatable for public consumption, the perfect, redeemed templar, remorseful and hypocritical.

The quill snaps in her hand like brittle kindling. Meredith bellows hoarsely and punches the desk, hard enough that the wood buckles and caves like a shattered spine. It is not enough. All the hate in the world cannot mend what is irreparably broken.

* * *

_overgrown_

Their party was following an old trail towards an ancient ruin long lost, winding its way between twisting trunks. The surroundings were oddly quiet without the distant crash of the sea and humdrum of the Gallows. Deep green moss clinging to ancient bark swallowed sound as skilfully as any whispering mage fearing lyrium-scented steps around the corner, and the sky was perfect and still, the beautiful appearance no doubt waiting to belch forward dark thunder and lightning to smite the undeserving the moment they lowered their guard.

If there was anything that life in the Gallows had taught Orsino, it was that which was most beautiful did the most damage, and nothing truly lovely was for the cursed mages of the Maker.

Every bird call or snapping twig made Orsino turn his head, raw nerves unable to stop flinching, even though they’d never used birdcalls as signals in the Gallows. Too obvious. It’d be senior Enchanter Gladys belting on about an apprentice misplacing her favourite book, it’d be a certain step on the staircase, it’d be the yelling of certain formulae, changed obsessively often to prevent them from ferreting out the secret. Then silence would fall like a scythe, save the metallic death rattle of marching Templars. They would come, cutting away something precious every time until every mage standing was full of holes for the poison to seep in. Like it had to him, that sky shattering moment of absolute weakness with the dagger splitting his skin and the demon whispering hungrily in his skull. But Hawke’s blood mage friend, Merrill, had mastered the demon Orsino had summoned with far too much ease and pity both, turning it away from his flesh.

He had been too weak to fight her. He had been too weak to do many things.

There had been too few of them standing, at the end. Too many good mages lost. Every step recalled their faces, every weary ache of his exhausted body chastised him, every beat of his undeserving heart reminded him of all they had lost. He did not deserve to be among those shepherded quietly away from still smoking Kirkwall, plodding after Merrill on the path ahead like rattling ghosts or whipped sheep. Orsino had given everything in the end, and it still hadn’t been enough. Meredith’s lust for power and control could not be slaked by any living obedience.

The world moved around him like a dream. Half of Orsino remained in the Gallows, waiting for the axe to fall. Everything that whispered of freedom felt false, tangled in the overgrown walls of the crumbled elven ruin that rose steep around them; like him, it was both hollow and stripped, the intrusive fingers of stiff vines pushing between the cracks in his walls and splitting him apart, nothing more than a murmur of faded glory.

“Not much further now,” Merrill was promising exhausted, shellshocked mages shuffling after her in torn and stained robes, but the real journey had only just begun.


	3. humanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke makes a mistake and can't bring herself to correct it. meredith stannard/female mage hawke. references to nsfw.
> 
> i wrote this about a year or so ago… when tumblr user psykopsy kindly first started sharing some of her excellent hawkedith art with me. i’ll confess that at the time i knew only vaguely the whole plot of da2.

Without her armour, Knight-Commander Meredith looked far too human for Hawke’s peace of mind.

Hawke didn’t like to look at her and see the nape of her bare neck, no Chantry necklace or cowl, blonde hair sweat-mussed and splayed over the pillow, no circlet to hold it back. Her shoulders looked the wrong shape without the heavy templar armour, and there was something downright wrong about seeing a line of paleish freckles curving close to her spine instead of a greatsword. The closest thing to her robes was the sheet pulled up modestly over her chest despite the muggy Kirkwall heat and the dark thickness of sunrise through smoke-clouds from all the collective fires of the city of chains greeting the day.

Hawke could see the new day shining intrusively in the gaps between the curtains, little chinks of light that struck the discarded circlet on Hawke’s dresser and gilded it warm and rosy, like it was something forgiving. It had only been a few hours, three at most, since Hawke had set it down so she could collapse the cowl around Meredith’s neck and pull her fingers through the knotty strands, tugging Meredith’s head back just a little each time until her hard eyes fell closed.

Without the forbidding templar armour, it was difficult to remember that Meredith was the very definition of a living weapon, shaped and tempered in the fires of her god and addiction to hunt people like Hawke, people born with curses under their skins that bubbled away in a constant countdown to corruption. It was difficult to reconcile the lyrium-madness, the paranoia, the filthy hatred and contemptuous lip that were as habitual on Meredith’s face as the surprised, intent, curious desire – all tainted with something darker, possessive over this stupid apostate, a little lyrium-thirst, she  _was_  a templar – had been utterly foreign a few hours ago. Without her armour and Meredith’s waking scrutiny, it was difficult to remember that Hawke had just made a very, very terrible mistake.

Hawke rested her chin on her knees and watched the light deepen around the curtains. The carpet in this room was thick and red, like blood, to match the bed’s coverlet. Shadows shifted hazily against the enroaching light deepening, flickering away until the discarded coverlet was the same colour as Meredith’s bitten lips. The swollen semi-darkness felt lurid and unreal, as if Hawke had been lucky enough to slip into the Fade and find her situation nothing but the mockery of a particularly twisted nightmare.

The feeling of sudden regret was familiar. Hawke hadn’t got as far into the relentless shit that was Kirkwall’s filthy underbelly without making repeated mistakes that landed her on the wrong side of beds, slipping out of windows before the sun could rise, washing her hands of the blood, laughing about it later like she was untouchable. She’d notched her fair share into the bedpost of bad ideas, but as far as mistakes went, sleeping with the Knight-Commander of the Templar Order was pretty high up there.

It even sounded like the start of the sort of bad joke Isabela would tell – an apostate and a Templar, in bed together, but the reality was no punchline. It was Meredith’s teeth on her collarbone and the rough glow of dispelling magic sinking into Hawke’s bones, the lack of hesitance, as if the Knight-Commander was naturally entitled to any mage’s secrets, Meredith’s tongue tracing Hawke’s many scars as if she could taste remnants of blood magic there, and Hawke’s hands in her hair, gripping close to the skull, directing that singular focus, carving red lines with her half-clipped nails like she could split Meredith open to reveal the festering ugliness inside.

This was not how it would have been, if Hawke had accepted the “offer” of a place in the Circle, in Meredith’s possession, in her control, at her whim. This was not how it would have been if Hawke had decided to pursue the glint in the Knight-Commander’s curious eye when they had first met, grabbing her hand and feeling the solidity of her grip, pulled up past the headless saarebas, the ball in Hawke’s court – she had seen the Templar written all over the insane, myopic fire in Meredith’s blue eyes, but Meredith had felt nothing of the apostate in the touch. This was how it was now; Meredith, asleep and unarmoured, Hawke, waiting for the other shoe to drop, mouth tasting of the lyrium- and ozone-crackle of Meredith’s skin.

The lines of power were gridlocked now, Hawke’s wealth, power, and popularity driven up hard against Meredith’s icy grip over the city’s chains, and the subtle push-and-pull of natural enemies had nowhere to go but deeper. There was something relieving in knowing that Meredith wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if Hawke lost control, something defiantly freeing in overcoming her defences, stripping her of her armour, bringing her to this low, vulnerable position, anyway. 

Hating templars was something of a necessity for the average apostate. The novelty and exciting danger of an unsecured mage drove templars to sniffing like bloodhounds, lyrium-addled brains bored of broken subjects. Revulsion was only self-defence.

Hawke could kill her if she wanted to. She had already tried, once or twice, since Meredith had fallen asleep, held her dagger to Meredith’s throat, the steel tip as close as a butterfly kiss. Hawke held it now, useless, thought about making the room redder with templar blood. No one in the whole city would truly mourn her but Hawke, and that was the damned worst thing of the whole mess.


	4. bloody lilies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4\. bloody lilies - Quentin sends lilies to his victims, but letters to Orsino. 500 words. Warnings for addiction to self harm, self harm, blood magic, and references to murder.

_ “My dear friend, _

_ I have obtained the books you requested. I'll leave them at our usual hiding spot. Please collect them as soon as possible. I would hate to see them in the wrong hands! _

_ Your last letter was fascinating! You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn't have doubted your resolve, and I hope you will keep me apprised of further progress. _

_ Your friend and colleague,  _

_ O.” _

Quentin sends lilies to his victims. A romantic at heart, their scent clings to Orsino’s fingers when he touches them. Each silky petal is slick and white as a little chip of bone, polished up like the skulls in the dungeons the Templars never got around to clearing away. Little mage-bones rotted until the flesh fell soft from them, curled up and dead beyond the touch of the light. They were sheltered, meek children, waiting like fattened pheasants for the dinner-hour to draw near.

He wonders if, given the chance, some of them would have picked lilies to kiss their first loves over. But love is not for mages – for them, the Maker provides the steel embrace of the Order and the kiss of fists, so what they have must be stolen, or orchestrated, in dead drops containing priceless books of magic less than sane. For them, madness spreads like a plague between feverish dashes of ink and rarer brushes of skin.

He does not know then the extent of Quentin’s operation. But the research – the magic, the knife in his shaking hands digging a wellspring of control from the last place where Meredith cannot touch, and ever-after, cuts steadying, mind clearing and sanity clouding – is endlessly seductive. Fascinating.

There is a realisation, somewhere, and he wonders when the Templars feel it. He sees it in their eyes sometimes, the dull knowledge of addiction, the need Orsino had been aware of but now knows. A future of unmarked skin fills him with fear, because it is the only future where he feels the only scar that truly matters burrowing into his mind and soul, sundering him from himself. He imagines his own voice, speaking dispassionately, giving them everything, and chases the fear with a knife until strength is running down into his glove, and he knows that Meredith can smell it on him. He washes his gloves in the sink in his chambers and calls it winestains.

Orsino cannot be defiled if he does it himself first, and in the dark, it becomes too hard to tell which waiting hands drip red. He will turn away none. If he saves enough, perhaps in time his own hands will become clean – the pricks of wine sluicing down his wrists and biting the fabric of his gloves becomes justified.

Quentin sends lilies to his victims, but he sends letters to Orsino. There is power in each curling  _ Q,  _ freedom in every crackle of swallowed flame as the priceless glimpses of  _ progress  _ and  _ resolve  _ wisp away into smoke and memory.


	5. card castles in the sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke, abandoned in the Fade, shapes a world that she finds familiar - and promptly becomes lost within it. tumblr prompt: judgement: awakening, resurrection, absolution // the world: fulfillment, experience, completion. 500 words.

Hawke is on her knees, fading. The dead Nightmare’s oily whispers have riddled her raw, empty on a desolate plain of crumbling Fadestuff. There is darkness blurring the edges of eyes dry and hollow, no strength to stumble on, no need to push air that doesn’t exist into lungs that feel fake. Something in her is searching, desperate, for a way to a long-gone home that never existed.

She collapses.

The Fade pulses in green streams. Slowly – it does its best, small wisps and weak spirits crushed under the call – slowly, slowly, it begins to form itself into a dying dream. Old walls, stained grey with a familiar foul stench of sweat and piss, old friends, seated around a table like they never left.

Hawke surges up. Suddenly there’s a greasy table over her head and an empty bottle leaking over her wrist. Her mouth tastes like cheap rum so revolting and rank she almost gags and her head thunders.

“You all right down there, Hawke?” Varric asks, stocky and concerned, leaning under the table to check on her, and there’s something off about his face but Hawke can’t judge what. Less scars, less wrinkles, something brighter in his eyes like cognac, a sense of hope that hasn’t been ground away.

Hawke jerks. Isabela’s boot is pressing into her ribs, an army of straps and buckles marching up her smooth tanned thighs, thighs Hawke knew better than her own once. Beside her, there are Anders’ robe hems smeared with Darktown shit, scuffed black boots with the toe poking through. Then demure elven feet, Merrill’s legs in figure-hugging leather. Fenris, bone-pale. Aveline’s shield leaning against a table leg. Sebastian’s gleaming armour.

She hears the chips clattering on the table, playful sniping, an intermixture of old voices from faces she’d seen slacken and rot, the low rumbles of laughter and Merrill’s piping voice asking questions, Fenris’ gruff response, Isabela’s chuckle like saltwater. They are dead, but no one has told them yet. In this moment, they are nothing but stupid drunk immortals.

It’s another trick, Hawke knows, but she is weak, Maker damn her. She blinks, eyes wet, up at Varric.

His impossibly young face is writ with sympathetic amusement. “You’ve been asleep for a little while, Hawke.”

“I…” Hawke is shaking as she squeezes out from under the table. Her nausea churns. Hawke stares around at the Hanged Man, just as she remembers it, and swallows around a lump in her throat. She wavers.

Does it really matter, if just for once, Hawke indulges it? Would it really be so bad to – give in, for a while?

“I – I suppose I had some crazy dreams,” Hawke whispers, and Varric’s eyes crease up around the corners as he grins, low and sly.

“I said mixing’s bad for you, Hawke. You should stick to what we normally get.”

“Yeah,” Hawke says tightly. She makes an attempt at her old smile, and no one seems to see the cracks. “Deal me in, would you?”


	6. guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meredith feeling guilty about enjoying herself, plus Hawke who never learnt shame.  
> three sentence microfic inspired by a comment made on tumblr. hawkedith. religious guilt, references to sex, implied nsfw.

Hawke was a wicked woman, Meredith knew, yet she had considered that wickedness good when choosing to lie with Hawke, as few would be able to reconcile the stark difference in their reputations with the Champion’s curling smirk ghosting distracting kisses over the sensitive skin at the nape of Meredith’s neck, playfully encouraging Meredith to surrender to the soft warmth and sharp heat of Hawke’s lips and teeth - who would dare to think it possible?

Licentiousness came easily, but the responsibility, guilt, and piety that plagued Meredith were as alien to Hawke as Hawke’s casual, careless physicality was to Meredith; even now, Meredith felt awkward out of her bulky steel plate, felt exposed without her hood to shroud the bright hair that Hawke took such delight in pulling, felt unable to forget the gentle disappointment in the eyes of clerics during her kneeling confessions of the base desires raging too strong for Meredith’s weak will to ever whisper the words of chastity that would bring her closer to the Maker’s pure light, and  _mean_  it.

But then Hawke’s hand was sliding teasingly underneath the waistband of Meredith’s breeches, and _oh, oh_  – if this was sin, Meredith understood why the twisted and misguided plunged with open arms to the abyss of the Void far from the Maker’s bliss, for there was no pleasure sweeter or crueller than this woman’s torture. 


	7. orsino in skyhold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part one of an au where orsino is alive in dai. warnings for graphic violence, blood and injury, and death. haven't decided if i'll continue it yet.

The Inquisitor wiped their brow of sweat and uncapped their waterskin, squinting up the languid rise of the hill their party had been climbing for the better part of an hour. Their thighs and calves burned and they were uncomfortably aware of their shirt’s dampness plastered to their back. The afternoon, entrapped by a humid cloud cover leadening the sky, was hot and windless, and tempers were fraying in the heat.

Three times Solas had snapped at Dorian for some insensitive comment about elves, magic, elven magic, or magic elves, and Dorian’s responses had gone from humourous and apologetic to sullen. Sera irritated them both by imitating their voices in whiny registers, seemingly trapped between the desire to get far away from the conversation and to mock it. The Inquisitor had given up mediating; they were evidently not inclined to get along irregardless of the headaches their ceaseless arguing was causing the Inquisitor.

The Inquisitor drank, trying vainly to block out their companions' bickering and somewhat despairingly attempting to evaluate the distance to the top of the hill, at the other side of which was a town crying out for the Inquisition’s help. Rest - and beloved, blissful privacy - called like a beacon to their travel-weary soul.

For a moment, their eye caught a flash of light between the trees, almost like sun on metal. A flicker, once, then gone. The Inquisitor paused, raising their fist for silence as they scanned the fringes of the copse crowning the hill like a thick tuft of spiny hair.

“What?” Sera demanded.

Solas hushed her impatiently; the Inquisitor was subliminally aware of him stepping up next to them without needing to be asked, peering into the darkness between the trees with sharp elvish eyes.

“I see nothing of note,” Solas said.

“Quite,” Dorian grumbled. He had not mastered the art of weaving around the tough thatches of grass clumps yet and was prone to stumbling over the woolly hillocks, much to Sera’s raucous amusement and his own rapidly increasing displeasure. “Nothing but quaint southern hills. I do so love your darling countryside – but can’t I love it from paintings, back in Skyhold?”

“No,” said the Inquisitor, a hint of their tension bleeding through to the curtness of their voice.

Dorian sighed dramatically. “The sacrifices I make for the world at large.”

The Inquisitor gave him a tight smile.

Sera made a rude noise. “Bloody piss.”

Ignoring the bout of arguments spurred by Dorian’s comment, the Inquisitor recapped their waterskin and started walking again. This part of Ferelden’s hinterlands was thickly-wooded with skinny, sickly trees that had bark gashed in raised ridges of silver by darkspawn teeth and claws. It was not unbelievable to think the sun had caught on one such memento of the all-too-recent Blight, transforming scarred bark to what looked like glittering metal.

It was not unbelievable.

The Inquisitor dug their fingers into the meat of their forearm, grunting as the pressure made the pain flare. The Anchor ached. It knew something was wrong here, some fault in the Veil that did not have the electric pulse of a rift, or the dull low throb of one just closed.

The Inquisitor glanced for Solas and his inevitable comment about the state of the Veil, but Solas was scanning the treeline again, something wolfish in the lines of his face, something tense like a predator that had just realised it had become prey. The Inquisitor, aiming to make the movement look random, turned their head to follow Solas’ line of sight. Another flash ghosted between the trees.

Slowly, the Inquisitor became aware of the dead silence, broken only by Dorian arguing with Sera. There were no birds singing in the trees up ahead. The soft rustlings of small insects in the grass and bees buzzing between dots of flowers had vanished. Even the breeze seemed to hold its breath, the stalks of grass poking up stiffly like the spears of a hedgehog’s spine. A chill came over them, cooling sweat-damp clothes.

The Anchor throbbed.

The Inquisitor’s hand fumbled carefully for the hilt of their weapon. Under their breath, they cursed softly. This was the worst possible place for an ambush - exposed on an open, uneven slope, hemmed in by the dark eaves of the silver-scarred trees.

Meaningfully, the Inquisitor sought Sera’s eye. She unslung her bow. Dorian, glancing between them in confusion, opened his mouth to ask a question - and cried out in surprised pain instead.

He blinked at the arrow sprouting from his shoulder. His face ashened. Dorian stumbled, blood oozing around the wound, and went to one knee.

For a moment, silence balanced on a pin-drop. Then the world erupted into chaos.

Armoured figures roared from the cover of the trees. They flooded from the darkness as a tidal wave. The unholy noise of their armour was softened by rags flapping and streaming over dented pauldrons like banners torn from filthy robes. Their smiles were blood-flecked, their eyes mad-shot, their weapons fine under recent curls of rust. Beside him, the Inquisitor saw the ball of magic Solas was gathering between his hands flicker and die.

“FOR THE MAKER!”  the once-templars howled.

The Inquisitor grabbed their weapon, feet planting amidst the rolling grass. Their attention was fixed on the oncoming horde, the world narrowing into a fixed point lit by the flashing of the armour in the sun. Dimly, they heard Sera swear. Context had ceased to exist. There was only the enemy.

The Inquisitor met the rush of the horde with a war-cry. A templar swung - the Inquisitor’s weapon matched it - the collision rung through the bones of the skull to the heel. The Inquisitor barged forward, knocking the templar back a step up the uneven slope. Somewhere, Solas snarled low and raw. The opening was split-second but the Inquisitor snapped at it like a dog catching thrown meat. Their weapon crashed into the templar’s unarmoured head with such force that it split overripe and juicy. A man screamed.

The Inquisitor tasted copper on a dry tongue.

They ducked under a sloppy overhead strike and drove their weapon into the templar’s unguarded midriff. The templar’s body buckled in an instinctive winded cringe. The Inquisitor seized a handful of the templar’s greasy hair and slammed their head into their knee. Once, twice, a crunch of a broken nose and the templar’s hoarse yell, bubbling blood. Sera cackled. The Inquisitor kicked the templar down, seeing the terror in their eyes as they spun their weapon for the end blow.

Seizing on the Inquisitor’s distraction, another templar lashed close. Abandoning the downed man, the Inquisitor backed from the whirling blade too slow. A cut burnt wildfire on their thigh. They could feel blood, wet and hot, run down towards their boot.

The Inquisitor stumbled over a loose clump of grass and hissed, eyes narrowing as the rogue danced out of the way of their reactive punch. A telltale weakness flared, the Anchor pulsed.

Poison.

The rogue barely had time to grin their victory - an arrow caught them in the soft cartilage of the throat and they went down. The gurgling of surprised red blood mixed sharp over bright silver armour.

“Alright, yeah?” Sera shouted as the Inquisitor fumbled for a bottle with fingers that suddenly shook. The poison was quick-acting, blurring their vision and balance.

Their rhythm off, they were easy prey. The next two templars to rush in did so at once, forcing the Inquisitor to parry both their attacks. The two working in grim tandem forced them further down the slope, towards a low rut in the grass. The Inquisitor, sensing their intent, sidestepped on suddenly shifting ground - and fell.

It was this fatal mistake that saved their life.

A ruby fireball exploded where the Inquisitor had just stood, catching both attacking templars in the blast. The Anchor crescendoed, hemorrhaging green light over the Inquisitor’s riven palm.

The heat was intense. The Inquisitor threw up an arm to shield their face, but they couldn’t block out the screams. The two templars were writhing like men possessed, screeching as the arcane fire dug cruel roots through their living flesh, cooking them alive in their armour. The hungry fire burned ruddy, billowing thick greasy smoke into a sky rent with more fireballs, arcing like pebbles tossed towards a lake of seething warfare.

The splash of conflagration was incredible. The templars closest to it were engulfed instantly, their fellows further away thrown like broken toys. Even worse - the red fire leapt and gulped like a breathing thing, belching black smoke as it devoured enemies with the all the relish of a starved man sucking the grease of a roasted lamb off his fingers. The fireballs landed with deadly precision, missing the Inquisitor’s allies by the thinness of a hair but allowing their enemies no quarter. With surprise and grudging respect for the unknown mage (for Dorian and Solas had certainly never done this before), the Inquisitor recognised a pattern - the templars were being herded like stupid sheep, stumbling burning and sobbing together, dead man clutching dead man as his flesh bubbled and writhed away under his grasping fingers.

Just as quickly, the Inquisitor realised that they would do well to be far away from the epicentre of the unfortunate knot of templars.

The smoke cleared for a brief moment, and the Inquisitor saw clear through to the mage who had saved their life.

The figure stood anonymous, wreathed in red fire and haloed by the sun blazing through the smoke. The mage raised an imperious hand dripping red - blood, the Inquisitor realised with a sick lurch - and fire hissed and spluttered red as the blood dripped into it. The mage swirled and cast, the fireball whipping through the air with a soft crackling hiss.

This one was different, the Inquisitor could tell. There was no explosion of light and smoke - instead, the fire dissipated into mist, drifting gently over the huddled knot of templars like tender red rain. The deception of harmlessness lasted long enough for just one templar, aware enough in their panic to notice the drifting droplets of red, to reach up and touch one.

Their cry cut the air like a knife.

The blood became acid, gnawing through metal and flesh as if it were thin paper. The templar danced wildly under the strain, clawing at themselves, their body slumping in on itself like runnels of hot candle wax.

The mist dropped with the finality of a blade through a criminal’s neck. The templars screamed, and screamed, and screamed. The smell of their bodies, the sounds of their agony, were utterly inhuman.

Sickened, the Inquisitor turned their head away, and searched for their companions. The Inquisitor saw Dorian, standing dumb with a dead man at his feet, staring at the red fire slack-jawed. The arrow no longer protruded from his shoulder like a pointing finger, but the wound wept.

“Dorian!” The Inquisitor shouted, rolling to their feet. The poisoned cut shrieked pain and the Inquisitor swore colourfully. They dropped the first cure-all, its glass lit by fiery fury among the quivering stalks of grass. The second they caught hold of, wrestling with the cap as they limped to Dorian.

“Move- Dorian-”

The cap of the cure-all finally twisted off as the Inquisitor reached Dorian with an audible pop swallowed by the suffering of dying men. The Inquisitor gulped the cure with relief, gasping as it did its foul work and poison began to mix with the blood oozing from the wound.

Suddenly, the smoke twisted and distorted as if pulled by a great hand, funnelling free into a path lit blue by a crack of the sky.

“Quick! This way!” A voice called urgently out of the fire and smoke.

Blindly, the Inquisitor seized Dorian’s wrist and surged towards it. They collected Sera on the way, staring blankly at the destruction glassy-eyed in a puddle of her own vomit. She needed little urging to flee.

“Solas?” Dorian managed to ask, sweat pouring down his pain-blanched brow.

The Inquisitor swore, turning back against their own better judgement to scan the ambush site for Solas. The sight was so horrific that they nearly vomited themselves and had to turn quickly away.

“Inquisitor!” Solas’ voice called in the distance.

“Solas!” The Inquisitor shouted back. “Solas-”

Ignoring the urging of the unknown mage, the Inquisitor ploughed towards Solas’ voice, spluttering and coughing as they plunged back into the belly of the smoke. Flecks of red mist stung their cheeks, but did not grip and burrow deep like it had to the templars.

Solas had not gone far; he had slumped over beside the body of a templar who had got too close. Seven more ringed him, their faces slack in death. His pale forehead was shiny with sweat and his breathing was short and harsh. The blood-mist had bit his skin like termites attempting to worm down deep into stiff wood, what little of it exposed was riddled with painful welts. Weak magic glittered in the palm of his hand, stemming the rich red blood pouring from a deadly wound in his stomach. The sword that had all but run him through lay discarded like a grave marker, the ornate cross-guard worked with figures of Andraste and covered in Solas’ blood.

“Inquisitor,” said Solas, voice thin but remarkably calm. His grey-green eyes were clear and glossy with unshed tears of pain. There was dirt on his face, and a cut red over a bruise darkening his cheekbone from a gauntleted punch.

“Solas,” the Inquisitor whispered, dropping to a crouch beside him.

Their hand reached tentatively for the wound, but then thought better of it and clasped over Solas’ wrist instead, helping him keep his hand steady. Solas’ other hand fumbled and caught the Inquisitor’s elbow, clutching to them like a man pulling himself from drowning. The Inquisitor gently peeled him off.

“Dorian!”

“Inquisitor,” Dorian began hastily at the Inquisitor’s beseeching look, “I’m not much of a healer-“

“Do what you can and do it now,” the Inquisitor ordered. “Sera, healing potions. All of them.”

The two scrambled into action, Sera rummaging among the packs and Dorian joining the Inquisitor at Solas’ side. Dorian had not lied, his magic joined to Solas’ was still laughably weak, but the two of them working together managed to stem some of the blood. Sera, quiet for once, uncorked a potion, supporting his head in her lap as he swallowed dutifully. Her face was pale and blood-streaked, and her hands shook with shock.

The Inquisitor stood, spinning their weapon in one hand and scanning the writhing mist for any stray attackers. They killed one templar unlucky enough to come upon them as he sprinted wild-eyed away from the ambush, but the dying screams of men had begun to fade, leaving behind an eerie darkness in the columns of the mist. The world flickered in grey, punctuated by infrequent sobs and Solas’ choked, pained breathing.

And the footsteps, soft and slippered on blood-wet grass.

The sounds seemed to echo from every direction, hemming them in like the unlucky templars. The blood-mist was red-tinted, flakes of ash swirling off burnt and blackened corpses and kissing the backs of hands and cheeks like insect wings. The painful acidic quality had died to a low, persistent itching under the skin. The Anchor blazed, shooting angry lines of pain up the Inquisitor’s forearm.

The Inquisitor adjusted their grip with sweaty hands, darting a glance back at Solas. The healing magic and potions had put some colour back in his cheeks, but they’d be wise to move him back to camp soon. The wound was deep.

They had no time.

The footsteps were getting closer; quiet, unhurried, bringing silence from the last, whimpering Templars in its wake. The Inquisitor could discern a swish of a robe across stiff grass. Their spine prickled.

“Get him up,” they ordered, sweeping the shifting grey-red mist.

“Inquisitor-” Dorian began to protest, but the Inquisitor silenced him with a raised fist.

“We must go.”

The mist swirled, as if it had heard them speak. The Inquisitor narrowed their eyes. The skin still itched and wept from the blood-mist, coppery sweat running down the groove of their nose to their mouth. The air smelt brackish and foul. And from the darkness, the sounds of footsteps stopped.

“Peace.” A quiet but clear voice spoke. “I mean you no harm.”

“Show yourself,” the Inquisitor demanded.

In response, the mist began to evaporate, leaving clumps among the grass that the Inquisitor avoided looking at too long, not wanting to see the mutilated remains of their attackers. The dim, breathless grey of the world slowly slid away, like the thief’s knife carefully peeling the wax from a private letter, like pitch-oil on water, glossy and reflective, until the gentle cup of the blue sky shone with sun and cloud. The heat of the day was marred by the chill of battle and fear-sweat, and the foul reek of the bodies all-too perceptible in the melted piles of ash and twisted flesh.

The blood-mist dissipated, and in its wake left a figure standing, smaller and thinner than expected. It was the unknown mage, dressed in shabby travelling robes that had probably been fine once, a hood pulled up over his face that failed to hide the catlike gleam of elven eyes. He carried with the loose expertise of a master a staff so intricately carved the Inquisitor could immediately guess at its high expense with three roaring dragons, the rich wood dyed black. A well-used knife hung from his belt.

The Inquisitor lifted their weapon instinctively, unable to suppress a bolt of outright fear at facing such a killer capable of such ruthless destruction. They were not alone; Dorian stood behind them, swinging his staff in a defensive maneuver across himself and Solas, wincing as it pulled the arrow-wound, and Sera had nocked an arrow.

“I do not wish to fight.” The mage was seemingly unfazed by the weapons pointing at him. With a shaky, bony wrist, he pushed down his hood to reveal the drawn and gaunt face of an older elven man, green eyes recessed deep into the shadowed sockets. There was a wracked hauntedness in those eyes that spoke of a heavy burden of grief. The Inquisitor’s shoulders, weighted by the responsibility for all of Thedas, ached with understanding.

“Who are you, and why did you attack us?” the Inquisitor asked. The Anchor burned with pain around this desecrator of the bloodied Veil, adamant on the very real danger this mage presented.

“I am no enemy and I saved your lives,” the mage answered in a voice raw with exhaustion. “Is that not enough?”


End file.
